Biological Essentialism
, as seen in this video where a gender expert describes his top 2 genders.]] Biological essentialism is the transphobic, cissexist and unscientifichttps://www.vox.com/2014/6/3/5776396/why-theyre-not-really-sex-chromosomes ideology that gender is equivalent to biological sex, and both are defined by genitalia and/or chromosomes. (Coming Soon) Chromosomes https://www.vox.com/2014/6/3/5776396/why-theyre-not-really-sex-chromosomes "It was assumed until the 1950s that it was the double X in females that determined femaleness and lack of a second X in males that determined maleness. For half a century, that was official textbook knowledge. There's a way in which those older frames continue to persist even as that explanation is explicitly dismissed." "One thing that's disturbing is the mandate to study sex differences and not a parallel mandate to study gender. For me, any claim of biological sex differences in humans has to involve either a ruling out or a documentation of interacting gender factors. For example, in brain research, the way we socialize males versus females produces what looks like a biological finding, but it might be a readout of cultural training." Gender Formation (See also Nature vs Nurture and Gender and Neurology) http://footnote.co/where-does-gender-come-from/ "One of my studies focuses on the belief that boy infants are more physically active than girl infants.4 While the babies in the study show no sex-related differences in their own spontaneous activity, we discovered through detailed observation that the mothers interact with the boys in a more physically active way. They move boy infants, help them sit up, and touch them more often than they do girls." "The impact of the mothers’ behavior may go much deeper than just setting cultural expectations – it could actually have biological consequences. While more testing is needed to understand these biological effects, it is possible that the sensory, motor, and neuromuscular systems of boys develop differently than those of girls, at least partly in response to different patterns of maternal handling." "If biological development is influenced by a child’s environment in this way, “nature” and “nurture” are no longer distinct. They are a developmental unit, two sides of the same coin. Rather than talking about nature versus nurture, we should ask: How is nature being affected by certain kinds of nurturing events? And instead of viewing gender as something inherent and fixed, we should understand it as a developmental process involving the ongoing interaction of genes, hormones, social cues, cultural norms, and other factors." Paradox Bio-essentialists tend to argue that gender is rigid and defined in our DNA and basically unswayed by socialisation, but then react with terror at the concept of socialisation that is accepting of transgender people: “We have a social understanding that we have boys and we have girls,” Nigel told BBC Radio 4's Today “There’s a distinct difference between male and female, not just in what you wear but also within our DNA, the way that we are as boys and the way that we are as girls. We feel that there’s a political agenda that’s driving and pushing this. Remember we’re talking children that are six years of age. A six-year-old is not really able to, does not have the mental capacity to work out those kind of things. It’s such a young age and we’re concerned about that.”http://www.teenvogue.com/story/transgender-classmate You can't validly argue that gender is independent of socialisation and then argue that transgender people are the result of a 'political agenda' of desocialising gender. If you are scared that kids can be socialised into non-cisgender identities, then you accept that gender is not innate. Alternatives Frustrations can be met between fields looking to make distinctions between gender and sex, against the current climate of social justice which seeks to minimize the ways that such distinctions can be used to dehumanize and attack trans (and intersex) people. Below are some attempts to create terms that allow for distinctions without cis-normativity clouding the language with biological essentialism. Hormonal Distinction Instead of conflating sex and gender with genitals, which can vary throughout lifehttp://www.newsweek.com/rare-condition-causes-girls-become-boys-puberty-374934 and are often not binary in their presentationhttp://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex, it can be useful to instead refer to the dominant hormones a person's body produces at different stages of their life. In this way, studies of children can divide groups into oestrogen-dominant and androgen-dominant sub-groups. This necessarily represents a spectrum approach, because for people of all genders, our hormone's don't fall into simple A or B categories. Some people have a clear dominant, while others may not. Some may experience changes over their lifetime, such as when undertaking hormone replacement therapy. More importantly, hormones are scientifically known to produce meaningful differences in people's neurology and behaviour, unlike genitals which really only serve as a secondary indicator of the underlying hormone dosages of the person in question. Assigned Sex At Birth (ASAB) This one is not a true alternative to biological essentialism, as referring to someone's ASAB is really just a way of repackaging the concept of "biological sex" into terms that actively admit that the assignment of a binary sex is a coercive act. These terms actually do nothing to unpackage the binary itself, but simply acknowledge that this binary is enforced and not intrinsic. However, by using these terms we encourage the belief that they are intrinsically meaningful, which in turn encourages the gender binary. Science While the concept that gender is determined by sex is completely unscientific, there are valid biological distinctions that can be made between Oestrogen-dominant and Androgen-dominant people. Man flu, headaches and heart attacks: Health issues affect men and women differently - Cathy Johnson with Natasha Mitchell, ABC (TW: reduction of gender spectrum to 'men' and 'women', biological essentialism) Further Links 3 Reasons to Doubt the Most Widely Believed Biology-Based Gender Myths - Suzannah Weiss "When a behavior feels like second nature to us, it’s hard to imagine that it could have been learned. That’s why so many people intuitively feel that gender roles must be biological – and it seems like every day, there’s a new study to support that claim. But how conclusive is the evidence, really?" Reference Category:Gender Category:Biology Category:Transgender